1. Statement of the Technical Field
The present invention relates to real time communications systems, and more particularly to the processing of the seen/not-seen status in a real time messaging system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Real time communications systems provide a substantial enhancement over more traditional, asynchronous communications systems. Electronic mail delivery systems, the prototypical asynchronous communications systems, in its time represented a giant leap forward in respect to global interpersonal communications. Prior to electronic mail, individuals primarily communicated via telephone, facsimile and post. With electronic mail, however, individuals expect near instant delivery of text, and even imagery, audio and video, without incurring the delay typical of the postal system, or the expense associated with telephony and fax technologies.
Despite the ubiquity of electronic mail, asynchronous communications system lack several elements common in the realm of real time communications systems. In particular, the seemingly instant delivery of a message cannot be experienced in the world of electronic mail. In an impatient society, even the minor latencies associated with electronic mail often cannot be tolerated. More importantly, often the feel and nature of a “conversation” as it is known to human beings only can be approximated through real time communications where the participants to a conversation have little time to assess a response to any portion of a message, much as is the case in a live, face-to-face conversation. Hence, the use of real time communications systems, like instant chat, instant messaging, text messaging, audio messaging, video messaging and picture sharing have begun to penetrate the communications marketplace.
In a live conversation, participants to the conversation can confirm the “receipt” of any element of a message merely by visually gauging the reaction of the other participants to the message. Where participants to a conversation communicate remotely, for example by way of the telephone, the receipt of the “message” still can be detected audibly by listening for a response to the message. In the field of asynchronous communications, however, such as facsimile or electronic mail transmissions, one can only detect the receipt of a message by the context of any response to the message, or where a “receipt” is provided by the recipient device such as a recipient mail client or by a fax machine.
Real time communications systems, unlike asynchronous communications systems, do not lend themselves well to the “receipt” system of confirming that a participant to a conversation both has received and viewed or listened to a message. In this regard, while asynchronous communications systems typically handle a low volume of message exchanges at any one moment (given the asynchronous nature of the systems), in a real time system, message exchanges occur frequently much as they do in a live conversation. To provide a continuous stream of receipt messages between participants to a conversation in a real time communications system only would serve to consume excessive human and computing resources.
Notably, in asynchronous communications, the receipt system simply verifies that a message has been received and possibly opened (though many electronic mail clients mark a message as “read” simply if the title of the message in an inbox has been selected for greater than a threshold period of time). The receipt system, however, cannot confirm whether or not a message has been read. To best simulate the flow of a live conversation in a real time communications system, however, participants to a conversation must know whether one or more of the other participants have received and reviewed the content of a message. Knowing that the message simply has been delivered will not suffice.